Our Wildwood, Summer 2021, Volume 46

1990s (L to R): Marcia Capparela and Hope Boyd at Jog-a-Thon opening ceremony

teachers were seen as the repository of knowledge. At Summerhill, founded in 1921 and now celebrating its 100th anniversary, the idea was and is that students will take the lead, both with regard to their learning and the functioning of the school as a community. They saw their philosophy and program as an antidote to an increasingly elevated focus on testing and assessment of children. Those with whom I met about those early years of Wildwood spoke with joy, conviction, and purpose in creating something, in working toward the development of a program that would be wholly good for children. Founded in 1971, as many independent schools were, I dug a bit to understand how what was happening in public schools at the time—busing, especially—might have driven the push to launch Wildwood and multiple other Los Angeles schools that year. Howard Stevenson, Ph.D., a professor of Urban Education and Africana Studies in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, has encouraged, “As we look to the future, have we told the truth about our past?” The founding of Wildwood was not in reaction to something but rather was an inspired endeavor looking to programs—like Summerhill—that were focused on pedagogy and progress. With her son, a niece, 10 or so other students, and two teacher friends, Belle started Wildwood School. I laughed with her about it because Belle’s somewhat disappointing answer to the obvious question many people have asked over the years is, “I don’t remember. I don’t even know where ‘Wildwood’ came from, but I remember the naming process because it mattered, and that when I came upon ‘Wildwood,’ that just felt right. That was a really good name.” Once it was up and running, Belle turned the school over to a group operating proprietary schools as she went on to a long career in law. Within a couple of years, the school was in the care of passionate parents, essentially the forerunners to the Board of Trustees that steward the school now. Marcia, who was at Wildwood for more than three decades, joined the school as parent and then as employee during those years. With a hint of nostalgia, Marcia described those early years as “nothing but the will to make it work and the belief in the direction we were going in terms of understanding child development and how kids learn.” Teams of teachers and a succession of heads pulled from myriad philosophies, all in keeping

with this core tenet that children learn best when working to understand and master a concept or skill in service to something greater. By the time my predecessor, Hope Boyd, arrived, Marcia had worked with a succession of heads, all of whom she describes as having contributed. As she notes, “It was really interesting for me to watch each of these heads of school do what they did, leave their mark, prepare the school for the next one. Hope could never have done what she did had it not been for Margaret. Margaret couldn’t have done what she did if it hadn’t been for Anne, on down the line. For me in my career, it was really a joy to watch this whole thing flower over

1992: Hope Boyd at elementary school

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CELEBRATING 50 YEARS! | OWW SUMMER 2021